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Governors Team to Reduce Gas Emissions
Last year, Schwarzenegger signed California legislation imposing a first-in-the-nation emissions cap on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants, with a goal of cutting greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020. And Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced plans to work toward a possible joint emissions-trading market.
New Mexico and Arizona last year agreed to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions. A similar joint effort on climate change was agreed upon in 2003 by California, Oregon and Washington.
  Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Chairwoman of the National Governors Association (NGA) speaks with a reporter before a session at the the NGA's winter meeting Sunday, February 25, 2007 in Washington. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke) (Lauren Victoria Burke - AP) Special Report
Read complete Post coverage on the science and politics surrounding the threat of human-induced climate change.
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President Bush also spoke out on his administration's work on energy issues, telling governors after private meetings Monday morning that his efforts to expand research and use of alternative fuels would reduce gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years.
"It's in our national security interest, it's in our national economic interest, and it will enable us to be better stewards of the environment," he said.
There also are numerous proposals before Congress to move ahead on energy and climate change.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who has passionately advocated clean technology for coal _ a material that exists in great amounts in his state _ said emission targets and trading systems like those promised by the latest state agreement are the best way to spur change.
"We need customers to ask _ no, demand _ if you're going to sell us electricity, it needs to be either wind-driven, solar-driven or zero-emissions coal," Schweitzer said.
Carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels is the biggest of the greenhouse gases, so called because they create a heat-trapping blanket when released into the atmosphere. Others are methane, nitrous oxide and synthetic gases. Scientists say the atmosphere holds more carbon dioxide now than it has for hundreds of thousands of years.
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